The Outcast
What would you give to be stronger and smarter? What part of yourself would you give up to do things nobody else could do? What would to sell for your dreams? The Outcast tells us what a kid named Lenny will do. Long before man reached the stars, built cities, walked upright, or even existed, a ship far from its home slams into Earth, leaving its pilot near death. In a desperate attempt to survive, the alien seeks a bizarre refuge in another animal at the brink of death. The alien survives, in a fashion, but he waits millennia to reclaim his life. Today, in the heart of America, a young man has lost his friends, his hopes, even his future. Once a golden boy – football hero, promising student – a tragic accident has damaged his brain; he is left in a dead–end job in a small town, his dreams put a shelf. Yet, something else has happened to Lenny. He can transform himself into something different. He does not know why, or how, and he can do things when he changes. He can think clearly, he is powerful, fast, and dangerous. An ancient victim of fate wakes up in the heartland and throws a young man’s life into chaos. Two strangers find themselves thrown together by the unlikeliest of circumstances. On their own, they have no hope. Together, they might have a chance. Here And Now Hailing from a culture with a saying that said that one could not walk on the legs of the past, an alien creature crash landed on Earth millions of years ago as a result of his decision to push his craft well beyond its designed capacities mixed poorly with his extreme distance from established travel lanes. Where the creature a lesser being, he mused, he would have regretted his choices, but he did not walk on the legs of the past. Desperate to survive the injuries he sustained during the crash, the alien took a floundering primate from a tar pit that would have been its grave and sowed him with his encoded essence to hide his being in his genetic code in the hope that he could keep himself in stasis until he found a solution to his injuries. Aware that his dormant presence would have an effect on the creature and his offspring, a genetic push which impact he ignored, the alien was certain that the primate would use his gift wisely. Unbeknownst to the alien, who did not live to witness it, the primate bashed his body with his own energy staff and left him to rot. In 1926, in Valliant, Oklahoma, Lenny’s boss chastised him for having a fight with Calvin in the mill that day, and, speaking frankly, went on to say that he knew that the accident messed him up good, but that his angry young man act had to stop now that his achievements in school where over. Though his boss insisted that he never regretted leaving Valliant, and that he believed that in time he would come to think that it was a good town like his father and his father before him, Lenny was certain that someday he would leave. Leaving in a huff while his boss mockingly said that unless he had gained some super power he did not know off Valliant was as safe as it got, Lenny ran into Molly right before she got into a bus that would take her to Oklahoma State. As Molly lamented that Lenny got off work early and saw her, Lenny bemoaned that the accident that scrambled his head had ruined their plans to go to school together. Kissing him on the cheek, Molly gave Lenny a letter and got on the bus, having forgotten that Lenny could no longer read. That night, three hunters out for a nightly hunt released their fierce dogs into the woods to search for their prey, which unbeknownst to them was a red–skinned behemoth whose shadowy features resembled those of the alien that crashed on Earth millions of years earlier. Hurting the dogs while defending himself, the alien fled into Lenny’s farm while the sound of the dog’s cries filled the night air. Walking into the kitchen moments after Mitchell, Lenny’s father, hung up the phone and told Calvin that Lenny had not arrived home even though he left the shop an hour earlier, the alien startled the old man, who dropped a cup of coffee on the floor. Dressed in Lenny’s tattered clothes, the alien told Mitchell that some dogs attacked him in the woods, and that he thought he might have hurt one of them when he tried to push them away from him. Just then, the door bell rang and Mitchell told the alien to hide upstairs while he got rid of whoever was at the door. Opening the door, Mitchell spoke with the hunters, who asked him if he had seen or heard anything strange in the last hour, and showed him one of the dead dogs. Watching from Lenny’s bedroom window, the alien transformed into Lenny, revealing that they were one and the same. Taking their leave, the hunters told Mitchell to keep Lenny inside because it was not safe to have him wandering about. Rushing upstairs, Mitchell asked Lenny what happened in the woods, and if he considered that the hunters could have shot him. Upset when his father asked him what happened with Calvin, Lenny said that he called him a retard, and that the worst thing about his condition was that he remembered being smart but now everyone, from his friends to his mother and now Molly, had left him. Unsure of how Lenny was able to change into the alien, his father asked him to never do it again, but having discovered that he could read when he changed, an ability he noticed when he passed by the barn and read a warning sign, Lenny was hesitant to stop. Changing into the alien, Lenny read a passage from a comic book show to his father that the doctor’s assertions that he would never read again were wrong, but, as he read, Mitchell finished his sentence and said that he had memorized a comic he read to him many times before. Leaving the room, Mitchell asked Lenny to go out and shut the hayloft doors in the barn. Going into the barn, Lenny mused that his father heard him but did not listen to him, and lamented that there was no one he could go to who had not left town or will talk to him anymore. Suddenly, Lenny witnessed an apparition of the alien whose essence lay encoded in his DNA, which told him that he was surprised to find himself awakening from his long dormancy trapped in the body of a substandard being no different from the pitiful primate of eons earlier. Startled as the alien called him a retard, Lenny fell off a window, but he changed into the alien and leapt back inside. Demanding an explanation, Lenny learned that the body he could change into belonged to the alien, the essence of whom his accident had somehow revived after he put it in his ancestor eons ago, time during which the human gene pool warped his DNA and gave Lenny the ability to take on his body at will. As the alien demanded his body back, Lenny, who was tired of being pushed around, rushed the alien, but since he was an apparition he ran right through him and fell through the wall into a fence. Looming over Lenny, the alien told him that his form and consciousness only existed in his mind, which meant that he could see him in any form he wished. Changing into Molly, the alien told Lenny that everyone had left him and that he appeared to be the only one who had stayed with him. Refusing to believe that Molly would never return from school, Lenny ran away to prove it with his new body. As Lenny ran through the woods, the alien’s voice told him to accept the truth, but Lenny ignored him. Finding Molly’s note in the street where he dropped it, Lenny was heartbroken to learn that it said that Molly was leaving for school to find her own life and would not be coming back. Standing still, Lenny heard the alien’s voice mockingly tell him that the only thing they had to depend on was each other. Category: The Outcast Category: Valiant Universe